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Among the environmental justice bills signed into law by Governor Brown in the 2015 session included priority bills by the California Environmental Justice Alliance.

These include:

• AB 693 by Assemblymember Susan Eggman will bring local solar power to low-income communities who are often last to benefit from green technologies, in addition to promoting renewable energy and cleaner air for the state. It would create a new program that will finance solar installations on multifamily affordable housing projects. The bill also allows tenants to reduce utility costs by directly crediting their bills for the solar energy used and generated.
• AB 1288 by Speaker Toni Atkins and Senator Fran Pavley will ensure that the California Air Resources Board performs more equitably and responds more effectively to issues in communities overburdened by pollution. The bill adds two representatives who work directly with low-income communities and communities of color overburdened by pollution to the California Air Resources Board (ARB).
• AB 1071 by Speaker of the Assembly Toni Atkins and Assemblymember Eduardo Garcia helps ensure that communities most impacted by environmental violations see direct benefits. The bill requires statewide environmental enforcement agencies to create a policy that allows a percentage of penalty fines from environmental violations to be directed into projects that benefit environmental justice communities.
• SB 350 by Senate President pro Tempore Kevin de León and Senator Leno will advance our clean energy economy and create jobs by increasing renewable energy in California to 50% by 2030 and doubling energy efficiency in buildings.

The California Environmental Justice Alliance is a statewide coalition of grassroots, environmental justice organizations building a movement among low­-income communities and communities of color most impacted by environmental issues to demand change. We unite the powerful local organizing of our members in the communities most impacted by environmental hazards – low­-income communities and communities of color ­ to create comprehensive opportunities for change at a statewide level. We build the power of communities across California to create policies that will alleviate poverty and pollution.

All together, we represent over 20,000 Latino, Asian Pacific American, and African American residents. Our members and partners are:

• Asian Pacific Environmental Network
• Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice
• Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment
• Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy
• Communities for a Better Environment
• Environmental Health Coalition
• Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability
• Pacoima Beautiful
• People Organizing to Demand Environmental and Economic Rights
• Physicians for Social Responsibility, Los Angeles

Wrapping up the Bicis del Pueblo Summer series this Saturday, August 29, 2015. Join us at the San Francisco Community School, 125 Excelsior Avenue from noon to 4:00 pm.

Come through and lend a hand wrenching on bikes for the start of the June Jordan High School bike club.

And if you live and/or work in San Francisco’s Excelsior, Mission, Crocker Amazon, Visitation Valley, and surrounding communities sign up to build your own fresh bike through Earn-A-Bici.

Bicis del Pueblo is a bicycle cooperative in the heart of San Francisco’s Excelsior District. It’s a community space dedicated to resiliency by learning and sharing know-how on bikes and healthy, carbon-free transportation options. We make bikes, tools, and knowledge available for local working families and youth.

An urbanIDEA forum on Gordon Chin’s Building Community, Chinatown Style

Thursday August 6th, 2015 6:00-8:00pm
Bayanihan Community Center
1010 Mission Street, San Francisco

Featuring:
Gordon Chin, founder, Chinatown CDC
NTanya Lee, independent movement activist
Oscar Grande, PODER

Moderated by Dyan Ruiz, [people.power.media]

This event is FREE
Please RSVP

As the fight over the right to stay in the Bay Area rages around us, join urbanIDEA for a special event in our 2015 Forum Series featuring Gordon Chin’s new book, Building Community, Chinatown Style.

Activists and thinkers NTanya Lee and Oscar Grande will discuss the ways that Chinatown’s history, as told by Gordon, can help us understand the contemporary urban housing dilemma locally and across the region. Join us as we explore how lessons and organizing strategies from past housing crises and fights for neighborhoods connect to today’s community struggles and the question of Who Can Afford to Live in San Francisco.

Copies of the book will be available for purchase. Sales will benefit urbanIDEA and the Chinatown Community Development Center, which published the book.

The San Francisco Immigrant Legal and Education Network (“SFILEN”) joins communities throughout San Francisco in mourning the loss of Kathryn Steinle. We are devastated to see yet another victim of gun violence in this country. As a network of 13 community based organizations which work with victims and survivors of crime in San Francisco, we extend our deepest condolences to Ms. Steinle’s family and loved ones.

It is because of our work with immigrant survivors of crime that we have fought hard to maintain the separation between local criminal policing and civil immigration enforcement. For too long, our immigrant clients lived in fear that seeking police protection from domestic violence or other criminal threats would cause them to be detained, without a warrant or probable cause, and for immigration agents to begin civil removal proceedings. Community mistrust of local police impeded immigrant cooperation with investigations of crime, and made our city less safe.

In recent years, San Francisco and hundreds of other jurisdictions around the country recognized that ICE “holds” – the practice of detaining immigrants without probable cause or a warrant — were making our communities less safe and leading to record breaking number of deportations which tore apart hardworking immigrant families. These jurisdictions recognized that the U.S. constitution has struck a careful balance between crime prevention and unwarranted detention, even for non-citizens and other minorities, and began to insist that the federal government follow basic procedures of due process before requesting that a non-citizen be detained.

In this painful moment, we invite our fellow San Franciscans to join us in mourning the victims of violent crime, and continuing to fight to make our city more safe for all its residents by supporting the current limits on ICE detainers.

Call or email Senator Mark Leno today!

PODER, and our partners with the California Environmental Justice Alliance, are working to pass AB 1062 (Bonta) through the Senate Environmental Quality Committee.

AB 1062 will create a dedicated source of funding for the California Environmental Protection Agency Environmental Justice Small Grants program. This program is one of the only state grant programs that directly supports environmental justice communities.

Call or email Senator Leno, a member of the Senate EQ Committee, and ask him to support AB 1062. The bill will be heard at the committee today, Wednesday, July 15, 2015.

Senator Leno’s Capital office number is: 916-651-4011.

Or you can send him and other committee members a message by clicking here: bit.ly/YESonAB1062

Call or email today!

Join us on July 16, 2015, 10:00 am at Balboa Park BART Station Plaza to learn how community residents are leading people-powered planning efforts to achieve equitable development and affordable housing in District 11.

From March through May of this year, the Communities United for Health and Justice Alliance conducted extensive door-to-door interviews with more than 300 community members, including residents of the Excelsior, Lakeview, Outer Mission, and Oceanview.  These efforts are providing the City and elected officials direction on the policies and public investments needed to implement affordable housing and equitable development on a number of development opportunity sites in the District.

Communities United for Health & Justice is a multi-ethnic and multi-generational alliance comprised of five organizations in San Francisco’s District 11: PODER, Filipino Community Center, Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth, Chinese for Affirmative Action, and Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center.  These organizations joined forces in 2008 to develop grassroots leadership and create long lasting change through organizing for affordable housing, economic justice, youth empowerment, and immigrant rights.  Key speakers at the July 16th event will include neighborhood leaders and District 11 Supervisor John Avalos.